Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Leaflet is Riddled with Bugs

British photographer Levon Biss is using the Leaflet mapping library to present a series of photos in his latest project, Microsculpture. Microsculpture allows you to view high resolution photos of insect specimens from Oxford University Museum of Natural History up close and in fine detail as Leaflet maps.

Using the Leaflet mapping library as a platform for browsing images isn't new. However it has rarely been done so beautifully. There are some gorgeous insects in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History collection and Levon Biss has captured them exquisitely.

Each insect's completed image consists of around 8,000 individual photographs (the large scale photographic prints are up to 3m high), captured using optical microscopes. The Leaflet mapping library really allows the user to fully explore these high resolution photos by zooming in close on the insects. The map scale in the top right-hand corner of the map provides a useful guide to the size of the insects as you zoom in & out on the images.

You might also be interested in the Art of Mapping Art, which looks at a number of examples of the Leaflet mapping library being used to provide an interface for zooming-in on and exploring works of art.